Socio-economic, Cultural and Religious Factors Affecting Suicide Prevention in Asia

A range of socio-economic, cultural, and religious factors influence patterns of and responses to suicide in the Asian countries involved in the Strategies to Prevent Suicide (STOPS) project. As a general rule, suicide rates are highest among relatively more prosperous countries, particularly those which have developed rapidly. Within these countries, suicide rates are highest for sub-groups that have remained socio-economically disadvantaged. Economic development has seen movement from rural villages to urban centres, and this has been associated with a heightened risk of suicide among those remaining in rural settings, perhaps because of economic hardship, lack of social support, isolation and access to lethal means like pesticides. Cultural factors also play a role in shaping the profile of suicides in participating countries. For example, cultural attitudes towards the woman’s role in marriage have been implicated in the comparatively high ratio of female to male suicides seen in several participating countries. The easy availability of pesticides resulting in death in cases that might otherwise have been non-fatal also plays a role. Religion – or the absence of religious belief – also exerts an influence on the pattern of suicides: it may be protective in circumstances where a given faith expressly forbids suicide or it may be permissive of suicide. Religious, legal, and cultural factors also affect the willingness to report a death as a suicide and contribute to the under-reporting and misclassification of suicides which, as we have seen in Chapter 1, are significant in a number of the participating countries. Taken together, these social factors may be more salient as risk and protective factors for suicide than they are in Europe or the United States of America. Socio-economic, cultural, and religious characteristics of the countries participating in the Strategies to Prevent Suicide (STOPS) project appear to play a role in the epidemiological profile of suicide described in Chapter 1. In some cases, these factors may have a direct influence on rates of completed and attempted suicide (e.g., when a country’s religion forbids suicide). In other cases, they may have an indirect influence in that they contribute to the degree to which people acknowledge their own suicidal behaviour and/or that of individuals in their families, and SUICIDE AND SUICIDE PREVENTION IN ASIA 20 consequently affect the accuracy of official suicide statistics. The current chapter outlines the key socio-economic, cultural and religious factors identified by the